Figurative Language And Tone In For Annie And Jessie's Girl

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“Love is pure, love is painful, love is sweet and love is dreadful” (“20 Interesting Facts”). Love has both up’s and down’s. How people prepare and react to love’s down will determine the outcomes. Poets throughout history have had difficulties with love, and Edgar Allan Poe, author of “For Annie,” and Rick Springfield, songwriter for “Jessie’s Girl,” are no exception. Poe and Springfield’s approaches on love are like peanut butter and jelly, they can go together, but do not mix. While Poe is the fault of his disconnection from love, Springfield has no control over his love life.

In Poe’s poem, “For Annie,” figurative language and tone is used to show how much he depends upon Annie. The poem states, “for it sparkles with Annie-/ It glows …show more content…

The song says, “you know/ I wish I had Jessie’s girl/ I wish I had Jessie’s girl/ Where can I find a woman like that” (Springfield 1). The repetition of the line “I wish I had Jessie’s girl” is catchy, is stuck in the head, and engrosses the audience. This also establishes the greed the narrator has for the girl and establishes that the tone is extreme jealousy.

Springfield’s song, “Jessie’s Girl,” uses connotation, denotation, and onomatopoeia to demonstrate the literal meaning that sometimes people do not always get what they want. He says, “Jessie is a friend… Jessie’s got himself a girl and I want to make her mine” (Springfield 1). The denotative meaning for a friend is a person your trust while the connotative meaning for this song is a person you envy. This shows that the narrator is jealous of Jessie and wants his girl even though he cannot have her.

Literal language and imagery are used by Springfield to show how jealous he is of Jessie. It states, “cause she’s watching him with those eyes/ and she’s loving him with that body” (Springfield 1). Springfield is literally stating what she is doing, and demonstrates how much he contemplates his love. He also says it in a way that we can see what he does not want to think about, which is that she will never be

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